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For the best result, a body should be frozen overnight before dismemberment is attempted.

That makes it easier to hack through flesh, more tidy.

Alternatively, a corpse can be soaked in acid, which causes the dissolving soft parts to fall off and liquefy leaving only bones for disposal, perhaps by pulverizing the skeletal remains with a mallet. Of course, that would require some forethought because most people don’t have gallons of hydrochloric acid lying around the house. Jeffrey Dahmer used this technique on some of his victims.

It should surprise no one that such useful details can now be found online. How to make a bomb, how to get rid of a body: Helpful household hints for the homicidal.

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If the deceased is, well, deceased, prior to dismemberment, there won’t even be that much of a mess to clean up. Blood spurts only while the heart is still beating.

But the heart of anyone committing such a grotesque deed must surely be hardened to the consistency of flint. It is a diabolical cruelty, though not particularly challenging. “Once you get past the squeamishness, it’s not difficult to do,’’ an expert in the field of forensic pathology told the Star. “An ordinary hacksaw or axe would do the job. And with a chainsaw, you could do it with no problem at all.’’

Detectives do not know yet — may never know — how Rigat Essag Ghirmay died. The 28-year-old, a landed immigrant from Eritrea, may have been murdered, could have lost her life in an accident or simply passed away in her sleep. But a dreadful indignity was inflicted on that poor woman’s body afterwards, of that there is no doubt. And indignity to a dead body is the only charge, thus far, laid against Adonay Zekarias, the man police believe was Ghirmay’s boyfriend although the exact nature of their relationship remains unclear. Zekarias, 41, also hails from Eritrea and the two were often together, at one point even sharing an address.

They both worked as hotel cleaners until laid off, had — it seems — attended English-as-a-second-language course, and taken a cooking class.

Ghirmay was last seen alive on May 15, leaving her Shuter St. apartment building. What happened to her after that is a mystery. Where did she go? What monstrous events befell her?

On May 24, a passerby noticed a strong odour coming from a bag on a trail alongside a creek near Alliance Ave., in the area of Jane St. and Eglinton Ave. W. “A death smell hit me in the face,’’ the man told CTV.

Doesn’t matter if one has never smelled that reek before; it’s unmistakably vile, the rot of decomposition.

Inside the green and black duffel bag — Tracker luggage, on rollers, with a handle, easy to manoeuvre — police found a woman’s torso, later identified as Ghirmay. It’s the only part of Ghirmay which has been recovered, about one-third of the human being she’d been.

The obvious deduction is that Ghirmay’s remains had been schlepped around the city during a macabre peregrination, some bits deposited here, others dumped there. Cadaver dogs were deployed to scour the area where the torso was discovered while a marine unit combed the stream bed. Coyotes have been spotted in the region so it’s possible other remains were disturbed, carried off who the hell knows where.

Police have also waded through garbage at waste transfer stations, one close to where the remains were uncovered and another close to the Shuter St. building. It was a miserable task and turned up nothing. By that point, with a week gone by, collected trash was already on its way through the elimination system, with some dumpster contents designated for disposal as far away as London, Ont.

We all end up as worm food — but not this way.

The dead do whisper their secrets and it’s remarkable how much information forensic professionals can cull from even a tiny scrap of evidence. Toxicology tests are being run in the hope that a cause of death can be determined. Saw marks lifted off bone can be matched to a murder weapon. There was a famous case in Toronto years ago of a high-end call girl — she’d actually started out life as a male and undergone a sex change operation — where police found only one body part, despite four months spent searching a dump site. That case resulted in a murder conviction against the victim’s boyfriend.

There’s no indication police have found whatever implement was used to dismember Ghirmay. They can’t even call it a murder yet, though Det. John Margetson said he expects the charge against Zekarias will likely be “upgraded.’’

Zekarias was arrested May 26.

Margetson has revealed that police have obtained video surveillance evidence from both the Shuter St. address and the Humber Blvd. home where Zekarias lived. The footage allegedly shows Zekarias struggling with heavy luggage and then returning to clean up the floor at the Humber location, as if mopping up leakage.

Investigators are appealing for information from anyone who may have seen a man trundling those bags — just one found — in the Humber Blvd. vicinity or elsewhere.

They’re trying to cobble together a case of suspected murder.

But it is unlikely Rigat Essag Ghirmay, the far-flung parts of her, will ever be made whole again in this world.

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